Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Book Blast & Giveaway: Love, Lucy



Hi, everyone! Today I'm having a Book Blast for the book Love, Lucy by April Lindner. There's also a wonderful guest post by author where she shares some tips for travelling abroad just like the main character; Lucy in the book. Oooh I just love HOLIDAYS..don't you? I'm going to Phuket next month so this book just might get me into that vacation mood. Don't forget to enter the awesome giveaway to win a copy of the book and 3 signed Jane posters.

Title: LOVE, LUCY
Author: April Lindner
Release date: January 27, 2015
 Publisher: Poppy
Pages: 304
Formats: Hardcover, eBook



While backpacking through Florence, Italy, during the summer before she heads off to college, Lucy Sommersworth finds herself falling in love with the culture, the architecture, the food...and Jesse Palladino, a handsome street musician. After a whirlwind romance, Lucy returns home, determined to move on from her "vacation flirtation." But just because summer is over doesn't mean Lucy and Jesse are over, too. In this coming-of-age romance, April Lindner perfectly captures the highs and lows of a summer love that might just be meant to last beyond the season.









April Lindner is the author of three novels: Catherine, a modernization of Wuthering Heights; Jane, an update of Jane Eyre; and Love, Lucy, releasing January 27, 2015. She also has published two poetry collections, Skin and This Bed Our Bodies Shaped. She plays acoustic guitar badly, sees more rock concerts than she’d care to admit, travels whenever she can, cooks Italian food, and lavishes attention on her pets—two Labrador retriever mixes and two excitable guinea pigs. A professor of English at Saint Joseph’s University, April lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two sons.






SOME RULES OF THE ROAD



Like Lucy Sommersworth, the heroine of Love, Lucy, my parents gave me the gift of a lifetime: a backpacking trip to Europe. I was a bit older than Lucy—22, and just out of
college—but when I arrived in Milan, Italy with a Eurail pass, a copy of Let’s Go: Europe, and a seventy-pound backpack I could barely lift, I was a wee bit terrified. Like Lucy, I spoke only a little bit of Italian, just barely enough to get by, and I wasn’t particularly good at
reading maps or train schedules. Unlike Lucy, I was travelling solo.


Luckily, my journey began with training wheels. I’d just taken a college Italian class, and my professor had offered a safe crash pad for the first few days of my trip—in
her family home in the Alps. Less luckily, when I reached Malpensa airport, nobody was there to pick me up. Giddy with excitement and jet lag, I wandered around the airport, eavesdropping on Italians as they hugged each other hello and goodbye, and had noisy arguments. I’d never felt more alone in
my life. Where would I sleep that night if my ride didn’t show up?





Luckily, my professor’s brother arrived at last to whisk me away to the family home in Domodossola. The extended family welcomed and fed me, gave me tours of their city
with its charming medieval center, helped me practice my Italian, and, when the time was right, brought me to the train station where my solo travels began for
real. It was time to take off the training wheels. 

If I’d felt alone back in the airport, I was even more so on that train to Verona, a city where I didn’t know a soul. In those pre-internet days, I could disappear
into thin air and nobody would even notice I was gone. The thought was chilling, but oddly exciting.




By nightfall, I’d made it to Verona. I’d figured out the public transportation, found a youth hostel, and booked myself a bed. Best of all, I had introduced myself to a handful of other backpackers. We hung out together in the hostel’s common area, sharing bread and cheese, exchanging stories, discussing the rules of the road—those bits of practical wisdom our travels were teaching us. Here are a few.




Time passes differently on the road.  Spend a few very intense hours seeing the sites with strangers and by the end of the day, those strangers have become a part of your story. Years later you’ll see their faces in your photo album and still remember stray details of the adventures you shared together, even if you can’t quite recall their names. 




Spontaneity is key.  There are few things as magical as showing up at a train station with no idea where you’re headed next, picking a random
train, and hopping on. 


Janis Joplin said it best: Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.  When you’re carrying all your possessions on
your back in a city where you don’t know a soul, you’re absolutely free. You can go anywhere, do anything. That freedom has its lonely moments—but it
can be the doorway to all kinds of adventures.




Embrace misadventure.  As carefully as you plan there will be crazy mistakes: wrong turns, slept-through train stops, multilingual misunderstandings, and all kinds of other blunders—and these will make the best stories. My misadventures are some of my favorite memories. The time I missed curfew and had to climb into my hostel through a second-story window. The morning when, hanging out my recently washed clothes to dry, I dropped my wet underthings out the window, onto a
stranger’s head. The night when, with no room to stay in, I slept on Venice’s train station steps with about a hundred other backpackers, the stars above us and the Grand Canal stretched out before us.

Would I trade that last memory for a safe, comfy night in an actual bed?  Not on your life.

The Giveaway

There is a blast-wide giveaway, ending February 6th at 11:59 p.m. Pacific, for:


  • 1 copy of LOVE, LUCY to be ordered from Amazon or The Book Depository – Int’l


  • 3 JANE posters (signed) – US only


  • Enter in the Rafflecopter below...



    Sunday, January 4, 2015

    Happy New Year 2015!

    Hi, everyone! First of all I'd like to wish a very happy new year to all my followers. It's been around 4 months since my last post. I know some of you might be wondering what happened to me. Well, I suffered from such a terrible book slump what with all the terrible things happening in my country. We had 3 airplane tragedies, heavy rain and floods and the mood is just sombre all around.

    I decided to to take a step back, and remember to prioritise what's important in my life. My family comes first and besides that my job has kept me busy most of the time.

    It is such a nice sunny day today so I decided to kill some time by cleaning my house. And my pile of books are just screaming for attention. I haven't decided yet what to do with them. Any ideas? It'll be fun if I decided to have a special giveaway for my followers. But the idea of postage fees are a nightmare. Should I give a whole box to one lucky winner or three separate boxes? I really want to hear your thoughts. Do leave me a comment. :)